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Talk about some of the feedback partners have given you in your first few months.
They like what we're doing. A lot of it is, 'Can these features be in ShoreTel 13 and be accelerated?' Or, they'll ask, what more can you do to drive attacking the competitive base and what other programs can you come up with, or where are you expanding the channel. They're a plenty motivated bunch.
They are. They are evangelists for you and many of them have been for a long time.
They get a very good return. We have no plans to do anything but be 100 percent channel. We're not trying to take services revenue away from them like so many of our competitors are. Avaya has been quite aggressive in doing that, we're not doing that. We're finding new revenue opportunities for them by expanding the capability, and adding things like mobility. They've got no lack of growth if they want to invest in doing it. We're easy to do business with, is the mantra, and we want to keep it that way.
We've talked about cloud's role in changing PBXes and the UC market, but looking out a couple of years as the industry's changing, what trends are you keeping an eye on?
I think unified communications is, to a certain extent, coming of age. It's been around for a long time, but I think people sought to dumb it down and say, hey, will put in a voice-over-IP system and get a good return because it's cheaper than the alternative and that will be it. But the productivity needs that all companies are going through are not going to go away, and they really want to make their most valuable employees more productive.
So getting all their UC tools effectively used is a big deal to them. And then getting the mobile components and enabling all the UC tools to be used from a smartphone device is a big deal for them. So what we see is the fact that where people used to talk about doing presence, and doing this, or doing that, they're now really doing these things. The fact that our system, is so simple is one of our strengths. You'll see more integration and more effectiveness in the industry.
I'm not sure how much hosted you'll see. I don't know. Nobody does. I don't have a crystal ball, but keep your eye on that one. I do see a big growth in mobility because that's the nature of the beast -- how many 100 million smartphones are installed every quarter? CIOs have lost the ability to control what device you bring into the company. You turn up with what you want and you say to them, connect it.
We've been talking about presence and video and the adoption of these technologies, especially in the enterprise. People are finally using all of these things so what changed that finally got us to that point?
I think a lot of the devices changed. Having an integrated, smart device is all you need to have a video conference, and that's what's driving it as much as anything. What's ubiquitous is that the way I pick up a smartphone today, I can now have a video call instead of just a voice call if I want to. And because you go through the Wi-Fi instead of the 3G or 4G, the roaming charges drop, so it's more affordable.
On video specifically, you do have the relationship with Polycom, but no plans to build a branded ShoreTel video product? Why not expand?
We partner with them, and we also have a relationship with LifeSize. It's working out well, and you don't necessarily have to own every part of it. I'm happy where we are.
We've known you since your HP days. What ultimately brought you to ShoreTel?
I'd just come back from China [in the CEO job at UTStarcom], and I wasn't really looking. I'v done many things in my life, but this one was too good to miss. It's the opportunity to turn a really good company into a great company. And it's a lot of fun. It's a small enough company where you can have a huge impact.
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